Miller: Hollywood Park heads to glue factory

“Everybody kept saying the same thing, ‘Oh, they'll never close this place; it's a landmark,'” Warren said. “Now, everybody I talk to says the same thing. They can't believe it. They can't believe they're gonna close. Here it is happening and people still won't believe it.”

A good crowd is expected today, but, on Friday, attendance was underwhelming and there was little to suggest the track was in her final hours.

Everything in the gift shop was 50 percent off and someone had produced a homemade sign that read, “The best gift you can give is the memory of Hollywood Park.”

They were handing out Zenyatta posters at Customer Service and why not? The last major promotional day here was Dec. 1, when they distributed all the hats, DVDs and baubles that were left over.

Out front, three television vans were lined up, a show of media force rarely seen around here any longer.

“Now everybody's coming out,” said the man operating the press elevator. “They should have been here earlier, when there was still a chance to save the place.”

The sentiment was predictable but hardly practical. No amount of publicity was going to save Hollywood Park, the land simply becoming too valuable to be used for a sport as dated as most of the people who follow it.

In a recent profile, The New York Times identified the last remaining celebrity to still regularly attend the races at Hollywood Park. Without Google, how many people today would know anything about Dick Van Patten?

“It's all very sad,” legendary comedian Mel Brooks told The Times, “when happy places like this close down.”

Throughout the track, the ghosts already have gathered. In one giant fourth-floor room, the beer taps were dusty, pictures had been pulled off the walls and loose wires dangled where TV monitors once sat. The name etched into the mirror behind the bar: “Longshots.”

It will all end today, with the 11th race, one they are calling The Auld Lang Syne. After that, horse racing moves on without the departed Hollywood Park.

And Dick Warren, who remembers where Desi and Lucy used to sit, who knew Alfred Hitchcock, who used to tell jokes to Milton Berle, will clock out for the final time.

“I liked it better when there were people here, when things were happening,” he said. “Now, every day is like this. It's quieted down to a trickle. I'm just disappointed. They're taking something away from you, away from everybody.”

That's pretty much it, in black and white, like most obits, appropriate for a sport struggling to be relevant in a colorful, HD world.

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